You wouldn’t know by their relaxed, down-to-earth manner and typical spousal banter that Renae Geerlings and Tyler Mane are a Hollywood power couple.

“Would you make the coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Aren’t you gonna measure that?”

“Nope.”

“Oh. OK.”

This is the repartee between the married couple as they mill about barefoot in the Holland Township home of Geerlings’ parents, Paul and Jan Geerlings, getting ready to talk about their new film, “Compound Fracture,” and what it meant to Geerlings to bring her work home to West Michigan.

Mane and Geerlings co-wrote, co-produced and co-star in the film, a psychological thriller touring cities in the U.S. and Canada, with a screening set for 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Celebration! Cinema at Woodland, 3195 28th St. SE in Kentwood.

The Los Angeles couple are transplants there, perhaps explaining in part their easy-going personalities. Geerlings is a Zeeland native who graduated from Zeeland High School in 1992 and Hope College in 1996.

Mane — a former professional wrestler and current film actor perhaps best known for his work as Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” films, Sabretooth in “X-Men” and Ajax in “Troy” — is a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Canada.

From her days performing onstage with Zeeland High Players, Geerlings realized early on that she wanted to be a film actress. She chose Hope for her undergraduate experience over Michigan State University because she didn’t want to move away from home.

That changed the day after finishing at Hope — where she earned a degree in theater — when she got in a car and headed to Los Angeles to launch her film career, initially finding work in the world of comic books.

“There were three choices: New York, Chicago or L.A. — L.A. didn’t have snow,” she said.

“I was too proud to take money from my parents, so I started temping and got a job with a company that did ‘something with art.’ They liked my Midwestern work ethic. They were shocked that I accomplished all the tasks they gave me in a short amount of time, so they offered me a job” at Top Cow Productions, a major comic-book studio.

“I intended to be there for two years and then go back to acting. Ten years later, I was the editor-in-chief,” she said.

It was back in the Midwest where Geerlings and Mane first met, at a comic-book convention in Chicago where Mane was promoting “X-Men.”

“I saw him across the room and went up and introduced myself. I didn’t know who he was. He was just a really tall guy. He said he was gonna call me. I saw him a year later at the same convention, and he finally called me,” she said.

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Mane tells it differently.

“I saw this gorgeous tall blonde at the Top Cow booth, and we got introduced at a party that same night. Then we lost touch. I made sure to go back to that convention the next year. I went hunting for her, so to speak.”

After a dozen years producing comic books, Geerlings decided it was time to forgo the safety and security of a steady paycheck and plunge headfirst into film. It was Mane’s encouragement to pursue her dreams, along with a backyard conversation with actress Leslie Easterbrook — who also appears in “Compound Fracture” — that tipped the scales.

“We were sitting at Rob Zombie’s picnic table in his backyard, and Leslie said, ‘Get rid of your day job and just do it,’” Geerlings said.

Geerlings returned to the stage — winning an LA Weekly award — and made her film debut in “Halloween II” with Mane.

Mane and Geerlings formed their own production company, Mane Entertainment, and decided a psychological thriller would be a good launching point, given Mane’s background in the medium, and also because some of the film’s themes — family relationships, estrangement and dementia — resonated with Geerlings.

“We are the culmination of the generation before us. Our choices shape the generation after us. That’s a big theme in this. And dementia — dealing with someone you love or are estranged from, how it changes them as a person. And coming home after a long absence,” she said.

After 18 months of writing and revising, an additional six months of pre-production, 18 days of filming and a year of post-production, “Compound Fracture” finally came to fruition.

Geerlings said being in movies hasn’t changed her life radically.

“It’s not so glamorous. It’s like Cuba Gooding Jr. said a few years ago, ‘Yeah, I won an Oscar, but I picked up my dog’s poop on the way out.’ It’s much more everyday than people think it is. The work itself is the fun part.”

Geerlings’ parents said that they never thought during her childhood that she would someday become a movie actress.

“I thought she would be a famous writer, but I never thought she would be in a movie,” Jan Geerlings said. “She started her own library because she thought her friends weren’t reading enough. She started writing poems at age 5.”

“Every parent likes to see their child succeed or produce something that has value,” Paul Geerlings said. “This (film) has real value. It tells a story about what can happen with older people and the nuances of the mind, and what can happen when they aren’t normal.”

Geerlings said she never really doubted her ability to achieve her dreams.

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"When I was young, it wasn’t really a question, especially if you come from the Midwest. If you work hard enough and you want it bad enough, you can get it. As the years went by, I realized I’d better start working now, or it was never gonna happen. It wasn’t until I met Tyler that I realized that the ladder of success that I was climbing (as a comic-book editor) was on the wrong wall,” she said.